500 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
A small boy, about eleven or twelve years old, who was with the 
man who told me of the two lodges there, said he had seen a 
Beaver swimming there last year: he was sure it was not an 
Otter (and it is extraordinary how generally the Otter and the 
Beaver are confused), and he was altogether so positive as to 
leave little doubt on my mind as to the correctness of the state- 
ment. Another man, who lived on the opposite side of the lake, 
did not know of these lodges, but said there were some at the 
lower end of the lake, where it empties itself into the river, about 
fourteen English miles from where we then were. 
Travelling on, I came to one of the two small rivers near 
eh , in which I had been told Beavers probably were to be 
found. These rivers run from some distance parallel to each 
other, then unite, and flow into a lake just above T——. A man 
living close to where I struck the river, and in whose company, as 
driver of a pack-horse, I walked a good many miles, was confident 
that Beavers occurred thereabouts,—i. e., in the southernmost of 
these two rivers alongside of which our course lay,—though he 
allowed that they were rare, and asked if I wanted to buy one: 
he did not appear to know anything about the other river. The 
track lay occasionally close down by the river-side, and there 
were frequent views of it through openings in the trees, but I did 
not see any traces of Beavers. All across the country here, as 
before, my enquiries were considerably checked by all the people 
talking ‘ Dél.” As an example of how easy it is to miss making 
them understand, after I had been vainly questioning this man 
for some time, pronouncing “ Boevre” with what I flattered myself 
was the most correct accent, he suddenly, in a moment of 
inspiration, asked whether it was “‘ Buvre” I meant! 
I met a gentleman on the following day who told me that 
there had been a pair of Beavers in a small river which runs out 
of the lake last mentioned and connects it with another lake 
lower down, but that they had disappeared about two or three 
years ago. Without much doubt they are the pair which esta- 
blished themselves in 1878 in the R Beek (see p. 235). From 
what I could learn, there are probably no Beavers in the former 
of these two lakes at this moment, and almost certainly none in 
the latter. 
A gentleman whom I subsequently met, Herr K , told me 
that he had himself found, in June of this year, at H——— (some 
